Frame touch-up paint - revisited
Posted: Fri May 29, 2009 7:53 pm
Unfortunately, I recently found out that it is nearly impossible for one person to remove the one-piece seat without the risk of smacking the frame tubes in some totally unexpected location. Lesson learned. But now I have a few small nicks in the powdercoat that are in a very visible location. I swear that I felt physical bodily pain when it occurred as well. 
A forum search shows posts with both a Valspar paint color code that matches the stock silver powdercoat well, along with a GM 1984-1986 paint color. After making an attempt at ordering from the paint supplier mentioned in the Valspar post, their phone number seems to be disconnected and their website order form doesn't appear to function correctly. Web searches on the Valspar color code turned up absolutely nothing, and the GM numbers meant nothing to my local GM dealer's body shop. Dupli-color's paint numbering scheme looked like a similar format, but they had nothing that matched either
I ended up buing spray cans of the two silver metallic paints that Dupli-Color offers for 1984-1986 GM vehicles and tried them out on a normally-unseen portion of the frame - and was glad I did.
Bzzzzt. No match. Please try again.
I visited a local Keystone body/paint supply shop, where they stuck their measuring camera gizmo on the car and it came up with this. Maybe someone else can benefit from it.
Too bad that what Keystone could provide was meant to be mixed and used in a spray gun only (with reducer, hardener, and all that). No option existed to get the formulation in a spray can or touch-up bottle with a brush. I'm sure I'll end up buying spray equipment at some time and learning to use it properly, but this isn't the time. Only a week to go before I have a big event with the car (more on that later...) and I still have a lot of other stuff to do.
So at this point, I did what I probably should have done first - called Mark at TMI. It was a pleasant surprise that they had paint in touch-up bottles for the standard silver powdercoat frame color on-hand. So another lesson was learned - call TMI first before chasing geese.
Has anyone else touched up their frame? If so, what did you use and where did you get it? If you applied it to small nicks with a brush only - did the metallic component of the paint end up looking 'off' when applied with the brush, or was the result acceptable?
A forum search shows posts with both a Valspar paint color code that matches the stock silver powdercoat well, along with a GM 1984-1986 paint color. After making an attempt at ordering from the paint supplier mentioned in the Valspar post, their phone number seems to be disconnected and their website order form doesn't appear to function correctly. Web searches on the Valspar color code turned up absolutely nothing, and the GM numbers meant nothing to my local GM dealer's body shop. Dupli-color's paint numbering scheme looked like a similar format, but they had nothing that matched either
I ended up buing spray cans of the two silver metallic paints that Dupli-Color offers for 1984-1986 GM vehicles and tried them out on a normally-unseen portion of the frame - and was glad I did.
Bzzzzt. No match. Please try again.
I visited a local Keystone body/paint supply shop, where they stuck their measuring camera gizmo on the car and it came up with this. Maybe someone else can benefit from it.
Too bad that what Keystone could provide was meant to be mixed and used in a spray gun only (with reducer, hardener, and all that). No option existed to get the formulation in a spray can or touch-up bottle with a brush. I'm sure I'll end up buying spray equipment at some time and learning to use it properly, but this isn't the time. Only a week to go before I have a big event with the car (more on that later...) and I still have a lot of other stuff to do.
So at this point, I did what I probably should have done first - called Mark at TMI. It was a pleasant surprise that they had paint in touch-up bottles for the standard silver powdercoat frame color on-hand. So another lesson was learned - call TMI first before chasing geese.
Has anyone else touched up their frame? If so, what did you use and where did you get it? If you applied it to small nicks with a brush only - did the metallic component of the paint end up looking 'off' when applied with the brush, or was the result acceptable?
